First Impressions: Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Posted on 7 November 2024

I've played for a bit more than 10 hours – honestly, 9, since I spent about an hour in the character creator – and I think that's enough time to form some first impressions about this game. I don't have the time or patience to organize anything into the form of a proper review, so here are my (largely unorganized) thoughts.

Shaders started compiling right upon booting up the game for the first time. It took around 15 minutes, though this apparently is dependent on CPU – and mine is not the best. Every subsequent time I've booted up the game, shader compilation has taken less than 1 minute.

I didn't bother modifying the graphical settings; as it turns out, this means everything defaulted to "high". I haven't had to change it at all because everything is running really smoothly. I haven't experienced any bugs or glitches so far.

I started getting a Dragon Age 2 vibe in the intro mission. I'm not even sure why; it doesn't quite make sense to me when I think back on it.

I'm liking the combat for the first time in the series! I've seen it compared to God of War 2018, but I haven't played that, so my comparison is the Star Wars Jedi games. I know that the success of Fallen Order is actually the reason that The Veilguard is a single-player game rather than a live service one, but I wasn't expecting to see any actual similarities to it. Not just in combat, either – I think the level/environment design is also similar. Thankfully, there's a lot less platforming.

Dialogue seems to be "faster" than in the previous games, but I think it's due to the amount of autodialogue. There's more of it than I expected.

Harding's voice sounds a little different – I'd say it's bubblier. I never spent that much time talking to her in Inquisition, so I'm not sure how much I'm remembering correctly or incorrectly.

Varric is, well, Varric. Still the narrator. I have no real thoughts on Neve and Lucanis yet.

Bellara has me wondering if Bioware wanted to bring back Merrill, but chose not to, since I believe she can die in Dragon Age 2. There are quite a few similarities between the two of them.

I actually like Solas's character here, which is quite a shock since I didn't care for him at all in Inquisition. I've only had two conversations with him, and the cinematography of those scenes was really well done. I'm also really enjoying being able to verbally slapfight him. It's fun.

I wasn't expecting to see Morrigan so soon. I think her outfit is okay except for the band that makes her look like she has a second pair of boobs. It's way too broodmother for my liking. Who in the world approved that.

The open world areas I've started exploring – Arlathan Forest and Treviso – are so much better than the open world areas in Inquisition. I'm not getting stuck behind rocks every five seconds, so that's a massive plus.

I'm definitely going to continue playing and will probably write up a full review like I've done with the other three games.